Come to us, little seeker, mouthed Ghorr. We’ve work for you.
‘Leave me alone,’ she said aloud. ‘My little baby needs me.’
Baby? Ghorr said to the others. She can’t have a baby – it’ll ruin her precious talent.
She must have dreamed that, for the next instant they were gone as completely as if she’d only imagined it; then gone completely, her memories of the moment wiped clean.
Myllii wasn’t there either, but that awful screaming rang in her ears again. She reached out to the baby’s knot, for the screaming seemed to be coming from there. An agonising pain, far worse than the baby’s kicks, sheared through her belly. She wrapped her arms around her stomach, trying to protect the baby, but the pain grew until it was like barbed hooks tearing through her.
Ullii made a supreme effort to reach beyond the pain but the barbs ripped through her flesh and she felt a great convulsion inside her, a bursting agony, as if the baby’s sharp fingernails were tearing desperately at the walls of her womb. Something burst inside her, then water gushed out between her legs, carrying the baby with it.
‘No!’ Ullii screamed, falling to her knees and clawing at the ground, but it was too late.
The baby, a little boy no longer than her hand, lay in a puddle, kicking feebly. She picked him up, staring at him in wonder. He was pink and healthy, and so beautiful that she felt a flush of love, but as she nursed him in her hands, the cord stopped pulsing and her stomach contracted again and again to expel the afterbirth. Ullii lifted the baby to her breast.
‘Yllii. Your name is Yllii,’ she said, as if that could protect him.
She desperately wanted him to live, for it was the only happy link left between her and Nish, the only good memory of their time together, and she loved him so.
Yllii gave one feeble suck, a little sigh, but his head fell away from the nipple and blood from his mouth trickled down her breast. Ullii tried to blow the breath back into the infant but the pink colour faded steadily from his face. The baby breathed no more.
Ullii looked up at Nish, not bothering to brush the tears away. ‘T’Lisp did kill our baby,’ she said at last, her voice as brittle as the glass underfoot. ‘She did it to please Ghorr, using this bracelet.’ She rose, letting the knife fall. Ullii did not look at Nish. Her fingers tore at the bracelet on her wrist, but it didn’t move. She took a deep, shuddering breath. ‘And all this while I’ve been serving and helping them. I brought them here so they could kill the only people who have ever been good to me.’
‘You couldn’t have known.’ Nish’s eyes were fixed on the bracelet.
‘I knew what they were doing,’ Ullii said, wrenching at it until it cut into the skin. She didn’t care. It burned her now; it made her Ghorr’s creature. Ullii would cut off her hand if there was no other way to be rid of it. ’And I knew I was doing wrong, serving them. I was afraid of Ghorr; that’s why I did it.’
‘Is that all?’ said Nish, who knew of old how obsessional Ullii could be.
‘I wanted retribution for Myllii and Yllii. No!’ she said savagely, ‘I called it retribution but it was just revenge. I wanted you to suffer. And Flydd too, because he didn’t save Myllii.’
‘What about Irisis?’
‘I didn’t want to harm her,’ said Ullii uncomfortably.
‘But you have, Ullii. You’ve condemned her to die like everyone else. And Tiaan too, who never did anything to you. Not to mention Malien and Yggur, whom you’ve never met, and Inouye, the pilot of the air-floater. She’s such a quiet little woman, not much older than you, Ullii. And she’s so afraid.’
‘Why?’ said Ullii.
‘Inouye is terrified that her man and her little children will be punished because she obeyed Fyn-Mah and helped to save Flydd’s life and mine. She’s afraid that wicked Scrutator Ghorr would even torture her innocent children.’
‘He wouldn’t …’ Ullii said, uncertainly. ‘How old are her children?’
‘Sann, the boy, is nearly four. Inouye’s daughter, Mya, would be two and a half, I suppose.’
‘So young,’ she whispered. ‘Have you met them?’
‘No, but Inouye often mentioned their names. No mother ever loved her children more,’ he said deliberately.
‘I loved Yllii more than anyone else could ever love their baby!’ she wailed, jerking the bracelet up and down her wrist until it scraped off the skin in crumpled strips.
‘I know you did,’ he said, very quietly. ‘But would you let Ghorr kill Inouye … if you could save her?’
‘I don’t know her,’ Ullii said sullenly.
‘Would you allow Scrutator T’Lisp, who murdered our baby, to torment innocent little Sann and Mya?’
Ullii shuddered and pulled the mask over her face, then scuttled between the glassy blades into the darkest cranny of the chamber.
‘Ullii?’
She put her hands over her ears. She had to block him out. She knew what Nish wanted of her, but it was too hard. It was much safer to drift, to hide.
He kept calling. She couldn’t block him out completely, and of course Nish knew that. Eventually she took her hands away from her ears.
‘Yes?’ she said quietly.
‘I need your help, Ullii.’
‘What’s the matter?’
‘The gash in my arm is still bleeding. If you can’t fix it I’m going to die.’
‘Good!’ she said mulishly, though Ullii had a shrinking feeling inside. Already she’d taken a little comfort from his presence. She didn’t feel quite so alone. ‘I can’t do anything about it.’
‘Of course you can. You always carry a needle and thread in your pack, to sew up your spider-silk underclothes.’
‘Can’t reach it,’ she muttered.
‘See that long spear of glass, there? Reach under and hook it through the strap of the pack and drag it out.’
‘It’ll cut me.’
‘Wrap your shirt around your hand or something. Don’t you have any initiative?’
It was the wrong thing to say. Ullii simply closed her eyes and scrunched herself up in the corner.
‘Ullii?’
She blocked him out.
He was quiet for a while, and then he said, ‘If I die, you’ll be all alone up here.’
‘I can climb out.’
‘Down to Ghorr and the scrutators?’
She scrunched herself up into a tighter ball. ‘You can’t help me, Nish.’
‘I wasn’t planning to. Ullii, I’ve been a fool. I treated you badly, and hurt you terribly. I’ve done stupid things and I’m sorry for them …’
‘Yes?’ she said when he did not go on. She liked hearing him talk like that.
‘I have to do something good to make up for it …’
She didn’t reply at once. Ullii was no fool – he was trying to lead her somewhere and she didn’t want to follow. But neither did she want to be alone again.
‘What, Nish?’
‘You’ve done wrong too, Ullii. You betrayed your friends. You’ve condemned Flydd and Irisis, and everyone else in Fiz Gorgo.’
‘It wasn’t my fault. Ghorr made me do it.’
‘No, Ullii. You chose to help Ghorr.’
‘He forced me.’
‘You didn’t have to find this place. You could have told him that you couldn’t see anyone in your lattice.’
‘He was too strong. He was going to hurt me!’
‘You could have resisted.’
‘He threatened me with Scrutator Fusshte. He’s the most evil scrutator of all, Nish.’
‘You could have resisted even Fusshte,’ Nish said inexorably. ‘You could have pretended that you’d lost the lattice. They wouldn’t have known any different.’
‘It was as if Fusshte was looking at me though my clothes; even through my skin.’
‘I’m sure that was horrible, but you betrayed your friends and now they’re all going to be put to death in the most awful way. Once the scrutators have killed them, the last hope of the world will be gone. We’ll lose the war and the lyrinx will eat us all, even you, Ullii. And it’ll all be your fault.’